Pass notes

No 2,025

Say who? Howard was responsible for one of the most important developments in meteorology, not to mention the English language.

Explain. He, er, named clouds.

Well, anyone can do that. "Ooh, that one looks like a bit like an Alan. And that's definitely a Mariella." No, dummy, he gave the clouds their proper names, the ones weathermen use.

Get out of it. If you don't believe me, a blue plaque with his name on it will this week be unveiled in Tottenham, North London, honouring his contribution to the climatic lexicon.

What was so important about it? Believe it or not, until the 19th century, there was no agreed system for classifying those masses of water vapour - they were just described as white, grey or black, as "mare's tails", "mackerel skies", "woolly fleeces", "towers and castles", "rocks" and "oxen's eyes".

Rocks? Wouldn't like to get caught in a downpour under one of those. Quite. Then in 1802 Howard, a chemist and amateur weather buff, published an opus called The Modifications of Clouds, in which he proposed a new classification, dividing them into four basic types. You know, the ones you learned in GCSE geography and have never used since.

Cumulus, stratus, and... er... drat. Cirrus and nimbus.

Ah yes, much fluffier. But surely he's not the only person to have attempted this? Funnily enough, a certain Jean Baptiste Lamarck, of France, classified and named five different cloud types that very same year. Howard's Latin names caught on; Lamarck's French ones didn't.

Hang on - five cloud types? What happened to the other one? Blowed if I know.

Do say: "We are eternally grateful that Luke Howard came up with such an easy and straightforward way of naming clouds" (Michael Fish, weatherman).